LECTURE OUTLINE I. Prenatal Development 1. Zygote: the union of sperm and egg. 2.

Germinal stage: the period from conception to implantation, implanting on the uterine wall. 3. Embryonic stage: the prenatal period of development from implantation until about the eighth week of development. a. Major body organs develop. 4. XY or XX: the genetic code that begins to assert itself about the seventh week of development. 5. Androgens: male sex hormones produced by the testes which happens if a Y sex chromosome is present. 6. Amniotic sac: The embryo is suspended within this protective sac. a. Helps protect as well as maintains an even temperature. 7. Umbilical cord: connects the embryo to the placenta. a. The exchange of nutrients and wastes happens here. 8. Fetal stage: the period of development beginning in the third month until birth. 9. Newborns weigh on average 7 pounds for boys and 7 pounds for girls. II. Childhood A. Physical Development 1. Babies usually double their birth weight in about 5 months and triple it by their first birthday. Their height increases by 10 inches in the first year. 2. Reflexes: are simple unlearned, stereotypical responses elicited by specific stimuli. Essential to survival; do not involve higher brain functions. a. Rooting: Infants turning their head toward stimuli that prod or stroke the cheek, chin, or corner of the mouth. b. Withdrawal: Infants withdraw from painful stimuli. c. Moro: startle reflex. d. Babinski: Infants fan their toes when the soles of their feet are stimulated. 3. Motor Development: The progression from lifting the head to running around. a. Maturation and experience both play a role. b. Sequence typically is: rolling over, sitting up, crawling, creeping, walking and running. 4. Perceptual Development a. Within a couple of days, infants can track a moving light with their eyes. b. By three months they can discriminate colors. c. Fixation time: the amount of time spent looking at one stimulus instead of another. 2-month old infants prefer stimuli that resemble a human face. d. 3-day old infants prefer to hear their mothers voice to those of other women. B. Cognitive Development 1. The ways in which children mentally represent and think about the world. 2. Jean Piagets Cognitive-Developmental Theory a. Piaget hypothesized that childrens cognitive processes develop in an orderly sequence of stages. b. Assimilation and Accommodation i. Assimilation: responding to new stimuli through existing cognitive structures. ii. Schema: a pattern of action or a mental structure involved in acquiring or organizing knowledge. iii. Accommodation: the creation of new ways of responding to objects or looking at the world. Transfer existing schema to incorporate new events. c. Piagets Stages of Cognitive Development i. The Sensorimotor Stage The newborn is capable of assimilation.

 By about 8-12 months of age, the infant realizes that objects that are removed from sight still exist. This is called object permanence. This stage is dominated by learning to coordinate perception of the self and the environment with motor activity. Thus the name. ii. The Preoperational Stage Characterized by the use of words and symbols to represent objects and relationships among them. Egocentrism: A consequence of one dimensional thinking found in this stage. Animism: attribute life and consciousness to physical objects like the sun and moon. Artificialism: believe that the environmental events like rain and thunder are human inventions. Conservation: Basic properties of substances remain the same (conserve) when you change superficial properties such as shape. Children in the preoperational stage are developing this ability. Objective responsibility: people are sentenced on the basis of the amount of damage they have done, not their motives or intensions. These are all products of one dimensional thinking. iii. The Concrete-Operational Stage Children ages 7-12; show the beginnings of the capacity for adult logic. Children typically do better with tangible (concrete) rather than abstract ideas. Children become subjective in their moral judgments, less egocentric. Reversibility: the recognition that many processes can be reversed or undone, returning to their previous condition. They have the ability to focus on two dimensions of a problem at once (decentration) Childrens values begin to emerge and acquire stability. iv. Evaluation of Piagets Theory Was Piagets timing accurate? Does cognitive development occur in stages? Are developmental sequences always the same? 3. Lev Vygotskys Sociocultural Theory a. The transmission of information and cognitive skills from generation to generation. b. The child adapts to their cultural interactions. c. Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD): refers to a range of tasks that a child can carry out with the help of someone who is more skilled. d. Scaffolding refers to the temporary support provided by a parent or teacher to a child who is learning to perform a task. 4. Lawrence Kohlbergs Theory of Moral Development a. The Preconventional Level: base moral judgments on the consequences of behavior. i. Applies to most children through the age of 9. ii. Stage 1 is oriented toward obedience and punishment iii. Stage 2 Good behavior allows people to satisfy their needs and those of others. b. The Conventional Level i. Moral reasoning is judged by conformity to conventional standards of right and wrong (familial, religious, societal). ii. Stage 3: moral behavior is that which meets the expectations of others. iii. Stage 4: moral judgments are based on rules that maintain the social order. c. The Postconventional Level i. Moral reasoning is more complex and focuses on dilemmas in which individual needs are pitted against the need to maintain social order and on personal conscience. d. Evaluation of Kohlbergs Theory i. Evidence supports the view that moral judgments of children develop in an upward sequence. ii. Education is likely to play a role. iii. He may have underestimated the influence of social, cultural, and educational institutions. iv. Parents play a role.

C. Social and Emotional Development 1. Social relationships are crucial; as children, our very survival depends on them. 2. Erik Eriksons Stages of Psychosocial Development a. First stage: Trust versus Mistrust. i. Based on interactions with primary caregivers. ii. Come to expect that our environment will (or will not) meet our needs. b. Early childhood and preschool years our relationships encourage us to develop autonomy or feelings of shame and guilt (stage 2). c. During the school years friends and teachers encourage us to become industrious or to develop feelings of inferiority. D. Attachment 1. Attachment is an emotional tie that is formed between one person and another specific individual. Behaviors include: a. Attempts to maintain contact or nearness b. Show anxiety when separated. 2. The Strange Situation and Patterns of Attachment research a. Secure attachment: infants mildly protest their mothers departure, seek interaction upon return and are readily comforted. i. Children with secure attachment are happier, more sociable, more cooperative, have longer attention spans, less impulsive, liked better by peers and teachers, have fewer behavior problems. b. Avoidant attachment: infants are least distressed by their mothers departure. Play by themselves and ignore their mothers when they return. c. Ambivalent/resistant attachment: infants are the most emotional showing severe signs of distress when their mothers leave and show ambivalence upon reunion by alternately clinging to and pushing their mother away. 3. Stages of Attachment a. Three Stages of Attachment i. Initial-Preattachment Phase: birth to 3 months characterized by indiscriminant attachment (they prefer being held or being with someone but show no preferences for particular people. Specific attachment begins to form about 4 months of age). ii. Attachment-in-the-Making Phase: 3 to 4 months of age, is characterized by preference for familiar figures. iii. Clear-Cut-Attachment Phase: 6 to 7 months of age, is characterized by intensified dependence on the primary caregiver. Fear of Strangers (stranger anxiety): 8-10 months of age, children may cry and cling to their parents when strangers try to befriend them but doesnt happen in all children. 4. Theoretical Views of Attachment a. Behaviorists believe that attachment is learned through experience. b. Harry Harlow suggests that skin contact may be more important than learning experiences. i. Rhesus monkey research with the wire mesh and terrycloth mothers demonstrated that monkeys in danger prefer the terrycloth mother. ii. Concluded that there may be an inborn need for contact comfort. c. Konrad Lorenz (ethologist) noted that attachment is an instinct. i. Critical period: a period during which the animal is sensitive to stimuli. If is moves it must be mother. ii. The formation of attachment in this manner is called imprinting. d. Ainsworth and Bowlby consider attachment to be instinctive in humans. i. The critical period is extended in humans. ii. Less related to issues such as locomotion and fear of strangers. E. Parenting Styles 1. Instrumental Competence: the ability to manipulate the environment to achieve goals. 2. Parental behavior researched by Baumrind focused on four aspects of parental behavior: 1) strictness, 2) demands for a child to achieve intellectual, emotional and social maturity, 3)

communication ability, and 4) warmth and involvement. Based on research in this area, four parenting styles have been proposed: a. Authoritative: strict but are willing to reason with their children. Most competent children come from this type. b. Authoritarian: strict and rely on force; poor communication, cold and rejecting. c. Permissive: easygoing, warm and supportive, but poor at communicating. d. Uninvolved: leave children on their own. Make few demands, show little warmth or encouragement. e. Children of warm parents are more likely to be socially and emotionally well adjusted. i. They also internalize moral standards (develop a conscience). ii. Greater self reliance, self-esteem, social competence, and achievement motivation. f. Children of authoritarian parents are often: i. Withdrawn, aggressive, usually do not do as well in school. g. Children of permissive parents: i. Less mature, impulsive, moody, aggressive. ii. Delinquency is seen in adolescence along with continued poor academic performance. h. Children of uninvolved parents: i. Obtain poorer grades, hang out with the crowd that parties, deal and use drugs. III. Adolescence A. Definition 1. Except for infancy, more changes occur during adolescence than during any other time of life. 2. Neither children nor adults; a period of transition. B. Physical Development 1. Growth spurts last for 2-3 years. Grow 8-12 inches. 2. Puberty: a period during which the body becomes sexually mature. a. Secondary sex characteristics: body hair, deepening of the voice in males, rounding of the breasts and hips in females. b. Beginning of menarche (menstruation) in women, usually occurs between the ages of 11 and 14. c. Ovulation may begin two years after menarche. C. Cognitive Development 1. Adolescents are able to deal with the abstract and hypothetical. 2. Piagets stage of Formal Operations a. The final stage of Piagets theory beginning about the age of 11 or 12. b. Abstract thought including: i. Classification, logical thought, and the ability to hypothesize. ii. Can solve geometric problems. iii. Focus on multiple aspects of a problem at once. 3. Adolescent Egocentrism a. Press for acceptance of their logic without recognizing exceptions; egocentric thought. b. Imaginary Audience: the belief that other people are as concerned with our thoughts and behavior as we are. c. Personal Fable: the belief that our feelings and ideas are special. We are unique and invulnerable. Behaviors such as showing off and taking risks are seen. 4. The Postconventional Level of Moral Reasoning a. Highest level is based on persons own moral standards. Some may never achieve this but if they do it typically happens in adolescence. i. Stage 5: legalistic orientation; law is good for society. ii. Stage 6: moral reasoning demands adherence to supposed universal ethics. iii. Conscience is the highest moral authority. b. Are there gender differences in moral development? i. Using the Heinz dilemma, boys show higher levels of moral development than girls. ii. Carol Gilligan proposes that this is due to different socialization patterns for boys and girls, not differences in morality.

 Girls are socialized to focus on the needs of others and forgo simplistic judgments of right and wrong. Boys make judgments based on logic. D. Social and Emotional Development 1. G. Stanley Hall described adolescence as a time of Sturm and Drang Storm and Stress. a. Need to take into account individual differences and cultural variations. 2. 72% of all deaths among people result from: a. motor vehicle crashes (31%) b. homicide (18%) c. suicide (12%) d. other unintentional injuries (11%) 3. Striving for Independence: Adolescents strive for independence which often leads to: a. Fighting with parents b. Withdrawal from family life; though most adolescents continue to feel love, respect and loyalty toward their parents. c. Adolescents who feel close to their parents: i. Show greater self-reliance ii. Show independence iii. Fare better in school iv. Have fewer adjustment problems 4. Ego Identity Versus Role Diffusion a. The fifth stage of Eriksons theory. b. Ego Identity: a firm sense of who one is and what one stands for. If this isnt accomplished then role diffusion is experienced. c. Role Diffusion is spreading themselves too thin, running down one alley after another. 5. Adolescent Sexuality a. Statistics. i. According to the CDC (2000) about half of U.S. high school students have engaged in sexual intercourse. ii. Nearly 800,000 teenage girls get pregnant each year. iii. Encouraging news: there is a decline in the teenage pregnancy rate due largely to educational campaigns in schools, media, churches and communities.

IV. Adulthood A. Physical development 1. People are living longer than ever before. 2. Young adulthood characteristics: a. Height of sensory sharpness, strength, reaction time, and cardiovascular fitness. b. Sexually, most people are easily aroused and able to perform. 3. Middle adulthood characteristics: a. Diminished strength, coordination, and stamina but it is minor. b. Can still maintain excellent cardiorespiratory condition. c. Menopause: final phase of the climacteric. i. Decline in female sex hormone secretion. ii. Ovulation comes to an end. iii. Loss of bone density. iv. Hot flashes, loss of sleep, some anxiety and depression. 4. Late adulthood characteristics: a. Increased numbers of people in this age range. b. Increased brittleness in the bones. c. See and hear less acutely. d. Reaction time diminishes. e. Immune system functions less efficiently. B. Cognitive Development

1. Characteristics include: creativity, memory functioning and intelligence all of which are at their height in adulthood. a. Memory function does decline with age. People tend to retain their verbal skills and general knowledge into advanced age. 2. Crystallized versus Fluid Intelligence a. Crystallized intelligence represents a lifetime of attainment including vocabulary and accumulated facts. i. Typically increases over the decades. b. Fluid intelligence represents mental flexibility. This is the ability to process information rapidly; learning and solving new problems. 3. Alzheimers Disease a. Alzheimers disease is a progressive form of mental deterioration that affects about 1% of people the age of 60 and nearly half past age 85. It is a disease, not a normal part of aging. C. Social and Emotional Development 1. Characteristics include social and emotional development being the most fluid in adulthood. 2. Psychologically, adults are healthier as they advance from adolescence. 3. Adults are more productive and have better interpersonal relationships. 4. Young Adulthood: adults establish themselves as independent members of society. a. Fueled by ambition; wanting to advance their careers. b. Dream: the drive to become someone, to leave their mark on history; a tentative blueprint for their life. c. Erikson proposed that young adults enter a stage of intimacy versus isolation. This is marked by the establishment of intimate relationships. d. Levinson labeled this time period as the age-30 transition. Young adults ask themselves, Where am I going? and Why am I doing this?. e. Later 30s are often characterized by settling down, planting roots. 5. Middle Adulthood: key changes in social and emotional development take place. a. Erikson labeled this time of life as the generativity versus stagnation. i. Generativity is doing things that we believe are worthwhile. This enhances self-esteem and helps shape a new generation. ii. Stagnation is treading water and has powerful destructive effects on self-esteem. b. Levinson called this time period midlife transition. There is a shift in psychological perspective as people begin to think of how many years they have left. c. Women may undergo a midlife transition a number of years earlier than men do. i. Winding down the biological clock; the ability to conceive and bear children. d. Levinson proposed that this period may trigger for some, a midlife crisis. Feelings include a sense of entrapment and loss of purpose; some encounter severe depression. e. Many Americans find these years full of opportunities for new direction, they feel confident, secure, productive, and powerful. 6. Late Adulthood a. Erikson proposed a stage of ego integrity versus despair. i. Ego integrity derives from wisdom; expert knowledge, balance, and excellence.